When you get bullied, it affects you.
Not at first, but eventually it does.
When your brother gets bullied, it affects you. Especially for me.
When your brother is in hospital with an aggresive form of cancer, it affects you.
When you’re only 8 when it happens, it scars you.

When someone 6 years older than you come up to you and says, “Your brother’s gonna die because the doctors are absolute shit, and he deserves it for being some weirdo from another country. And you deserve to be miserable.” you don’t ever forget it.

This is my story from then on, in its unmasked, solid, horrible and sad truth.

I was always a social person, yet no one around me ever wanted to be my friend or even talk to me. If you’re alone, walking around your school aimlessly, minding your own business and a group of boys and girls come up to you, start pushing you around, shouting things at you that a 9 year old shouldn’t have to hear, you get scared. But you stay quiet. Eventually, you’ll end up emotionless and just look at them blankly, chanting a song over and over in your head. It’s what I did.

I got cornered one day, at the back of the school where there weren’t any teachers, and 3 girls and 6 boys played a game of ‘Push the girl around’ while shouting things at me. I fell on a little stone, and that little stone got stuck in my knee. They walked off as if nothing had happened, I stayed there for a while, calming myself before walking as normally as I could to the front of the school. I sat on the steps, but didn’t say anything to any teachers. My headmaster walked past and saw my blood stained and ripped trousers and made me go to his office. He asked me what happened as he took out the little stone, and I said I’d fallen over, it was nothing. My mentor and some other teachers came in and asked me what happened and I gave the same answer.

Eventually, the headmaster got the little stone out and told me to stay in his office doing whatever I wanted while he called my mother to come and pick me up, because I couldn’t go to class in this state. I’d always been a good liar, since I was able to talk, so I also lied to my mother. Everyone believed me, everyone thought I had a few friends, no one heard me cry myself to sleep every night for 5 years since I was 8. It still happens sometimes, when I get overwhelmed with my emotions.

Through all this bullying, I only had 2 beings I could talk to: my cat and my dog. My dog died a few years ago, and sometimes I cry because I miss him. My cat is still alive, and he’s always there to comfort me when I feel sad. I cry because I’m sad, angry, frustrated or lonely, but it doesn’t mean I’m weak. Of course it doesn’t. It’s made me stronger.

What I’m going to tell you next did bring me down, did make me weak, but I recovered from it and I’m strong again.

When I was 12, I found that there are a lot of places on the internet where you can talk to people and they can understand you. I made some friends, just people I talked to, without my parents knowing. I met a man, he was 25 at the time, and he introduced me to ‘sexting’.

At first, I loved the attention, hell, I loved him. Or so I thought. I later found I was just obsessed.
He used me, told me he loved me, and then he was sexting someone else a day later. I told him I wouldn’t ever sext with him again, and that’s when he started ‘slapping’ me around. All via sexting. It wasn’t physical pain I got from it, but mental. From then on, he used me whenever he wanted, and I’d go along with it, despite it being mental rape.

One day, I pissed him off royally, and he decided to ‘wrap his hands around my neck’ and ‘choke me’ while (mentally) ‘raping’ me. I cut off all contact then, and I didn’t go on the website again. I became more depressed than I was, and I started getting suicidal thoughts. I had Al and SoulSister by this point, but SoulSister was too far away to talk to properly, and Al got pissed whenever I even mentioned his name. Or anything to do with him.

I was randomly looking at pictures, and I happened to be looking for Black Veil Brides pictures when I saw the name of an ‘emo’/’goth’ website on one of the pictures. I looked it up and made an account on there. I made 2 more friends on there. One would become my other half and best friend, the other is Z.

EmoBoy, he has depression, he’s also had no one his whole life, and we both share the same likes and dislikes about everything. We’re both bisexual, favorite colour is black, etc. Small things, but then it comes to our writing. I’ve written a poem, way before I met him, and it fit him perfectly. He had a story idea and I was the main character. Also, we felt what the other was feeling. One day, I got really depressed for no reason, and I asked him if anything had happened that day and he said he had had a fight with his close friend and he was depressed about it.

Z is Z, some things we have in common, some we don’t. I still love him a lot though.

Both of them have had bad pasts, and they understood me despite not knowing all of it.
My mum found out about me talking to them, and the only reason I’m allowed to talk to Z is because mum has seen him while we were in a video chat. EmoBoy I haven’t spoken to since, though he has sent me messages when he’s had to vent about things, and he cuts, so I told him to send a message every once in a while, despite me not replying.

The summer holidays passed without a hitch, and Z said I was always glowing with happiness, especially when my baby cousins were around.

In September, school started. Which means, bullying started. When we had puente(diractly translated: bridge. It means you have an extra day off school after a day off.) my family and I went to Sevilla. Z helped me figure out that I’m in love with him and that night everything came out. How the rapist paedo abused me, the bullying, the sadness, the longing and desperation. It was one of the worst and best nights of my life. Z stayed up with me until I fell asleep talking to him about how I feel, and on October 31st he told me he loves me too, which was actually surprising… I was staring at my phone for a few minutes, re-reading what he’d said. My life is looking up now that I have someone like Z to talk to.

Now, ask yourself this: the teenagers, the children, the people that have no one they can talk to, the ones that have nothing to live for, what do they feel like?
I’ve been in that position.
I had no friends, nothing to make me feel better, and I was suicidal a lot.

Let’s go back to before I met Z:
When a supposed ‘friend’ turned out to be bitching about me, lying to me and everything and then she slept with my boyfriend, I stopped talking to her. I told her to watch out with the rapist paedo too, but she didn’t listen.
EmoBoy was there for me, so was Al and they both stopped me from cutting. That didn’t stop my pain though… I was bloody miserable and horrid company, depressed and snappy, retreating into myself. But I had people fighting for me. That made me better.

This week alone, I’ve been called a whore, a bitch and a slut. I’ve got a couple of bruises on my body. My school bag has been taken and passed around in a game of ‘Pass the bag around’ on the school bus. This same week, my P.E. teacher, my mentor, my English teacher, the head of studies and the headmaster have all given as least 4 people each detention for what they do to me.

You’re probably thinking, ‘why so many teachers?’
I’ll explain. My P.E. teacher and I are close, he’s the kind of person you can talk to but still stay at a distance with, and he also knows my brother.

My mentor because it’s her job, and she does care about me, despite not knowing me.
My English teacher because she cares about me, and she is a nice person who wants to help me. The head of studies because it’s his job and he knows my brother. The headmaster because he knows me, he cares about what happens to me and he knows my brother.

Why do I keep mentioning my brother? My brother is the best student this school has ever had. He always got top marks, never acted out, could still make a joke in class and he doesn’t let what’s happened to him bring him down or let anyone know that there are things he might not be able to do.
My teachers care about me too, for exactly the same reasons. I’m the second best student they’ve ever had, and only second because I’m younger and I talk more in class. Every single teacher knows my brother and I, simply because of our grades. I’m not being full of myself, I’m stating a fact and explaining.
In a school of 300, people know each other.

Anyway, thanks to those teachers, I think things are going to be easier for me, and I’m sure I’ll be happier too in the long run. No matter what someone threatens to do to you, the best thing you can do is go to a teacher or two and tell them what’s happening. They CAN and WILL protect you, even if you’re not a star student. It’s the kind of thing an adult will say to you, but I’m not an adult. I’m not even halfway through my teens yet, and I know that teachers have to protect you no matter what. And if a teacher doesn’t, you tell another one. And another. And another, until one of them does their job. Sometimes, the teachers that are the worst will be the first ones to say that they’ll do something about it.

My point with all of this is:
No matter what is happening to you, inside school, outside school, at home, on the internet, your teachers and true friends will help you. If you have no friends, then a teacher. A teacher, no matter what, cares about you. My English teacher knows that I’ve been involved with a paedophile, and she hasn’t judged me. She’s finding time, in her busy schedule, to talk to me about how I feel, how my past makes me feel. She’s going out of her way to help me, because I don’t have any adults I can talk to(I have SoulSister, Z and Al, but they’re teenagers.) and she cares about me.

Now you know what has happened to me, tell someone what’s happened/happening to you. It may hurt, but it’ll heal without a scar after some time. 2 weeks ago I couldn’t talk about my past without feeling a huge amount of pain. The other day, I suddenly KNEW that I could, and it was good for me. I’m now trying to help you. So tell someone what’s going on, it’ll help, eventually.

I promise. And I make a massive effort to not break my promises. If you feel that you really can’t talk to anyone, you can always contact me and talk. I won’t tell anyone about your story, I won’t ask any questions, I won’t even reply if you don’t want to, but I am here to listen. Keep in mind that I’m a young teenager, not an adult, and I will not judge. Ever.